They shuffled on out into the bright afternoon, the baking weather which lay all over London that summer. It was just coming on to 5:30 when I got down to the cells, but by then I’d ceased to miss opening time; the piquancy of the hour barely crossed my mind.
I wondered how long Williams would last as we rolled along out of London, in convoy, and up the M1. I caught a glimpse of a fast bowler just starting his run towards the last of the sunlight in a park below the North Circular flyover. Yes, his reputation must have taken a fearful knocking over the whole business and Marcus might not be in Siwa Oasis for ever. On the other hand they were right about the KGB: Williams would stay where he was to the bitter end; and so, in the nature of things, would I.
I was surprised all the same, some time later, when I came to go over the case for my appeal, to hear from my solicitor that my allegations against Williams would now have to be directed to the Deputy Chief of Service of British Intelligence. Williams had left his Holborn office for good.
Of course, he’d been kicked upstairs after the fracas in Cairo; perhaps the KGB had intended that in their plans from the beginning: a kick it may have been, but the fool now had free run of all the secrets in the attic: a pawn for a queen. It was a good move.
“I don’t know how far well get with this appeal,” my solicitor said, a touch of weariness in his voice. He had travelled all that day on the way up to the top security jail in Durham and was understandably tired. “People at that height tend to be pretty sure of their ground — tend to protect themselves thoroughly, you know.”
He looked at me anxiously, seemed to gaze through me, as though searching for something, a spot a long distance away on the horizon. “I know,” I said. “I know.”
About the Author
Joseph Hone, born 1937, is a novelist, journalist and broadcaster. Faber Finds is reissuing his four Peter Marlow spy thrillers — The Private Sector, The Sixth Directorate, The Valley of the Fox and The Flowers of the Forest. As a writer of spy thrillers, Joseph Hone has been compared favourably with the likes of Eric Ambler, Len Deighton and John le Carré. His most recent book, Wicked Little Joe, is a memoir published by Lilliput Press